Someone Who Outdrew You
by Deanadelyon
Summary: Love is not a victory march; it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.  Severus and Lily were the best of friends, and then they weren't, and in the end it all came down to the boy.  Songfic: "Hallelujah."


Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, scenarios, and locations are property of J.K. Rowling. I have made no money from writing the following story; I have written it simply for my own enjoyment.

A/N: "Hallelujah," by Rufus Wainwright. Fantastic song for Severus and Lily, in my most humble opinion :) Please excuse any (especially minor) canon flubs here; I don't perform any in-depth timeline research before writing fan fiction.

Also: For those of you following my other stories, "The World Begins Again" has _not_ been abandoned; and "Counting Stars" will gain two more chapters, hopefully in the relatively near future.

.~*~.

Hallelujah

_I heard there was a secret chord,_

_That David played, and it pleased the Lord,_

_But you don't really care for music, do you?_

_It goes like this: the fourth, the fifth,_

_A minor fall, a major lift,_

_The baffled king composing "Hallelujah."_

Severus Snape disliked many things: his nose, absolute silence, very loud noises, and music were just the beginnings of that list. He had particularly disliked music, as a principle, for most of- if not the entirety of- his life. It didn't touch him, didn't resonate with him as it did with others. He didn't understand what others found so heartbreakingly beautiful about it; to him, it was just people he didn't know singing or playing songs that meant nothing to him, personally, so why should he want anything to do with it?

_She _loved music, though, and he could _almost_ tolerate it when she was nearby.

Lily Evans absolutely, positively _adored_ music, and had made it her mission- from the tender age of eight- to convince her Best Friend Severus Snape that it was, in fact, beautiful and touching and substantive. And, even at such a young age, Severus thought- privately, and inarticulately- that music was only ever remotely beautiful when Lily was there with him.

Years passed, as years have a habit of doing, with alarming speed and an off-putting grace. They were nine, then ten, eleven, twelve. Severus still didn't like music; it made him uncomfortable. Lily was still Lily, and to her nothing in the world was quite so fun as making poor, dear Severus uncomfortable, especially with the employment of said music.

Yes, it made him very uncomfortable indeed; or, more correctly, the absence of feeling from music made him uncomfortable. Everyone else seemed to gain something from it, and he really didn't.

But once- just once- he felt it.

It was a Saturday, a bit cloudy and chilly, but not quite cold; most people were inside, playing games and sitting before their common room fires, chatting in large groups. Severus and Lily, being Severus and Lily, had decided that it was a lovely day for a stroll across the castle grounds. And so, off they went, Lily bringing with her a small pouch of tiny larvae and insects in case of bowtruckles. She quite liked bowtruckles.

Though he'd never in his lifetime admit it, Severus quite liked bowtruckles, as well. Not nearly so much as Lily, but still.

About mid-afternoon, the pair realized that they had, almost unconsciously, traveled the familiar path to Their Tree. Their Tree was an "old and gnarly fellow," according to Lily, and it was indeed quite ancient; it stood out, an almost obsenely huge oak, at the very front of the Forbidden Forest, amongst slim, young pines. And so, they did what they usually did: sat down and leaned against the Old and Gnarly Fellow, and today they sat in a companionable sort of silence, as Lily tried without success to entice a particularly skittish-looking bowtruckle towards her with the crawly things in her hand.

Severus still didn't care for silence. In the quiet, he could think about things that hurt him, things that shouldn't even be thought around someone like Lily Evans. Things that scared him, such as his parents' fighting, his father when he was drunk, and the unshakable fear of what would happen to him, Severus, if something bad ever happened to Lily.

This is where his thoughts had unfortunately strayed, when he first noticed it. A soft, beautifully strange melody reached his ears, and he turned just slightly to the side, and couldn't help the rare smile that spread across his face when he saw what was happening.

Lily was in her own little world- the "Lily Garden," as she liked to call it. Her eyes were slightly unfocused, though still watching the bowtruckle, and a tiny smile was set on her lips and in her startling green eyes. She was singing, and it was lovely and warm and hit him almost _spritually_, in a way that nothing had ever really touched him before. It was odd and disturbing and beautiful and so very, very _real_ and, for the first time, he _felt_ it.

Bewildered, feeling as though he watched the scene from somewhere far away, Severus found himself humming along. Lily turned to him, not missing a beat in her song, and sat closer, so their shoulders were touching; both leaned their heads slightly towards each other, and there they stayed for quite some time.

Severus closed his eyes and took a deep breath, feeling the peace and warmth in his chest and all around him, and wished for this moment to last forever.

_Your faith was strong, but you needed proof;_

_You saw her bathing on the roof, _

_Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you._

_She tied you to a kitchen chair;_

_She broke your throne, she cut your hair,_

_And from your lips, she drew the "Hallelujah."_

Severus was never one to doubt himself, and was never one to give himself over to wistful imaginings. He knew reality, or was quite sure he did, by the time he was fourteen. He understood how things worked, and was always so strong in his convictions.

He and Lily had been friends for _years_ now, relatively many of them, and he was quite aware that she cared for him, very much. He was also painfully aware that he cared for her, too, but in a way that was _so _very different. It had been growing for months now, this feeling of love that was beyond what he'd felt for her before. He'd always loved her; she was the only one who could hug him without being pushed away, the only one who could make him _truly_ smile, the only one who ever really heard his laugh. Yes, he certainly did love her.

And she loved him, and he knew it. But she loved him _differently_, and it hurt; but, it was enough. Any sort of love or caring or even _liking_ from Lily was enough for Severus.

They'd argued today; the same, and only, thing they'd argued about before.

"Please, Sev, stay away from them, they'll rub off on you, I know it..." She was begging- _begging_- Severus to stay away from who he very much believed to be his friends.

"Lily, you don't know them, and you're aware of that fact," he'd answered, more sharply than he'd intended, and it had escalated from there. She hadn't looked at him for the rest of the day.

At nearly midnight, he couldn't sleep at all, so he left the Slytherin rooms to sneak up to the Astronomy tower, something he and Lily often did when they were in one of their rare rebellious moods. He was going there alone tonight, however, simply so he could think and consider... things. Life. Love. Reality.

He stood still, shocked, when he reached the tower. She was there- asleep, with a cloak functioning as a blanket. The moon was full tonight, and the stars were many, even through the clouds that swirled almost menacingly overhead. In that pale, blue-white light, with her hair fanned out around her head and a bit over her face, she looked precisely like an angel. Severus sat close to her, silently, as to let her sleep. She was _always_ _there_, he realized with amazement. She always managed to be around just when he needed her most, just when he wanted nothing more than to see her face.

But, then again, he always needed her. Always wanted simply to see her face, her smile.

It was a dependence that scared him, even then, at that age. When Lily was around him, he felt better, and noted that he looked healthier after they'd spent time together: he looked less gaunt, and _cleaner_, somehow. But he wanted, and his instinct told him that ne _needed_, to be okay on his own, too. But, he wasn't; only with her was he really alright. And that was very, very bad, but it was _wonderful_ in some way, at the same time.

_God_, how he loved her. And how it _hurt_, like hell, that it wasn't quite like that for her.

But oh, in the moonlight she was so very beautiful, and here he could sigh and pretend that things would stay so beautiful forever. He could _hope_.

_Maybe I've been here before,_

_I know this room, I've walked this floor;_

_I used to live alone, before I knew you._

_I've seen your flag on the marble arch;_

_Love is not a victory march._

_"Mudblood!"_ The word played in his head, over and over, incessantly, never stopping. He cried that night, and too many nights after. And he'd only cried when _they_ fought, or when Tobias hit him, and only when he was a small child. He hadn't cried in _years_, but now he did.

He went to Their Tree, The Old and Gnarly Fellow; but some of its (_his!_, the childish part of Severus corrected) branches were dying now and Lily was nowhere to be found. He went to the Astronomy tower, praying that she'd be there like she'd been before, that she'd still know how he needed her there.

But it was all empty, and he was completely, utterly alone.

So he turned to those she hated so much, the ones he had once called "friends" but didn't know what to call them anymore. And his love burned strong and always, but now it fueled this terrible bitterness that he _hated _and that crushed him with its unbearable weight. Who he was, who he _had been_, shut itself away in a dark and safe little corner of his mind and heart, keeping itself protected as this new and tragic Severus emerged.

She saw it, all of it, but he didn't notice that fact. He didn't see the devastation on her face as she watched him change, grow thinner and more destructively proud; and he never saw her cry, any more than she saw him.

_Who was this boy?_ she wondered, over and over, until she didn't want to know anymore.

_There was a time you let me know_

_What's real and going on below, _

_But now you never show it to me, do you?_

_Remember when I moved in you, _

_The holy dark was moving, too, _

_And every breath we drew was "Hallelujah."_

He remembered her, like a blessing, like a curse; he couldn't forget any detail, any expression on her face, or the perfume she wore, or how her favorite color was blue and how her _G'_s made a funny, loopy tail at the bottom. He always thought he heard her voice, in the silence; sometimes, he could hear that song they'd sung all those years ago.

How he wished to know if she was truly happy with _Potter_; and how he hoped, and admittedly knew, she was. And how he wished, guilty and hurt, that she wasn't.

He saw her, once- just once, at Flourish and Blotts, in Diagon Alley. It was late in the evening, the time when only the most dilligent and obsessive and focused of book-readers still prowled the aisles of the store. She saw him, too, and when they made eye contact, it was like the very shadows of the world were moving; and he felt such loss and remorse and she felt such pity and sadness, that it was like each could feel the other. Such a tiny bubble of something similar to hope rose in him, and a tiny, tentative smile pulled at just one corner of his mouth; though the devastation in her eyes was answer enough.

She shook her head, closing her eyes to hide the tears and the loss she felt for who he'd been, and she left, without the book she'd been looking at with an interested smile for several minutes before she'd spotted him.

And another part of who Severus Snape had been, who he truly was, locked itself away from pain.

He never saw her again.

_Maybe there's a God above,_

_And all I ever learned from love_

_Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you._

The boy. Oh, the boy was _James_ and Severus was so disappointed. Was nothing of _her_ left there?

But then, he saw it: Lily's eyes, and they still held her expression, her depth. And Severus found himself almost wishing that all of that had disappeared, too, so he could simply pretend that the child was indeed James Potter and forget about _her._ He knew he had to protect the boy; he'd vowed to do so. But he struggled with himself, something he was so very unaccustomed to doing; should he treat the boy as Lily, or as James? Or should he simply ignore him?

Maybe he wouldn't be too much like _her_, Severus reasoned. But that comforting notion died the very first day of class.

The Potter boy recorded his words.

Lily had done that, too, when Severus said something that she found interesting or funny.

It was too much, too painful to see so much of her in a child that looked so like _James Potter!_

His decision was stupid, and rash, and childish, and hurtful and cruel. He knew that. Bt the decision was made.

He'd cared for Lily, and she'd cared for him, and shed ended up dead and he'd ended up _so damn bitter;_ and now the Severus that Lily had known was locked securely away, somewhere far enough in Severus's mind so that it couldn't be hurt again.

Animosity, hatred, and cruelty were better. And so very much easier, especially when the boy's likeness to James began to shine through, and Severus Snape learned to truly despise Harry Potter.

_It's not a cry you can hear at night,_

_It's not somebody who's seen the light,_

_It's a cold and it's a broken "Hallelujah!"_

The last time he saw the Potter boy, he'd wanted to scream and cry and _talk_ to the boy, just once, and see if he could find the answer to the question he didn't know. He had to _see.._.

"Look at me," he'd pleaded, and Potter did, and if Severus could cry now, he would. Those eys held her heart, her compassion. He, Potter, was so like _her. Now, _Severus saw it, and finally the part of him that had stayed away for so long broke free and, for the first time in _decades_, Severus recognized himself.

And then, the darkness faded in. Just like that- no tunnel of light, no comforting, if disembodied, voices surrounding him. But it _was_ peaceful, and _warm_. And quiet (_Silent!)_ and, Severus realized with a sinking, horrible sort of pang in the vicinity of his proverbial heart, he was _alone_.

Still.

And an anguished cry rose in him, and he could hear it but he _couldn't_. And then it cut off, and he was silent, stunned, because he saw her standing there- and now there was a "here" to stand upon, and he couldn't name it and couldn't describe it, but he _knew _it, somehow. Albus was there, far in the background, his back to them all and apparently conversing with something- or someone- out of sight; and Severus felt no shred of anger towards the man. Albus was kind and insightful and caring and _powerful_; but, first and foremost, he'd been a war general, and had acted excellently as such.

And _Potter_- James, the real one- was there, and his friends, and Lily's friends, but strangely enough, Severus didn't feel hatred or bitterness there, either.

There _was_ no hatred, no bitterness. Not here.

There was love. Acceptance.

And there was music, and it sounded like _her_ song, the one she'd sung once-upon-a-time, in a far away world, when he'd wished to stay there forever.

Now, after all these years, Severus finally _heard _it, with his entire soul, and he found it so very beautiful.

And Lily Evans-Potter smiled at him, as the little girl in her soul rejoiced.

_Hallelujah._

.~*~.

A/N: Please review :) Anything constructive or complimentary is appreciated, and very much so!


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